Good thread idea. I'd like to add that in the vinyl days, sequencing often had more to do with the actual frequencies of a given series of songs on a record than how well they flowed together, or the vision of the recording artist. Songs with a lot of treble built in almost always had to be on the outer ring of the record to faithfully reproduce the best sound. So that would dictate the song be either the leadoff track on side A, or relegated to side B(first track). As the stylus gets closer to the center of the record, higher frequencies and loudness start to become dull. Quieter ballads are often on the inside of an LP. This was an engineering issue throughout the history of vinyl mastering, and the better production houses adhered to that recipe.

Once the CD came along, the artist's vision as to sequencing could actually be closer realized, but due to it's capacity, also eventually lead to what some feel are bloated "filler" heavy releases.